Kira's Death
by StrangerInAStrangeWorld
Summary: An alternate version of Light-Raito if you're a purist-Yagami, aka Kira's, death, though I have tried to make it similar to the real one. It begins just before Raito-san begins to scream in despair. The T rating is for relatively mild gore, death, and because this is Death Note, for crying out loud. Sorry to disappoint the yaoi fans, but there's no slash. Read and review, please.


_Here's my alternate ending, though it is not that different from the real one, to the manga version of _Death Note. _It begins just before Light begins to scream. Please read and review_.

Matsuda-san's POV

Light can't be Kira! He's L, he works to catch that murderer. _Can't he?_, an insidious voice whispers in my mind. _His name isn't in the notebook, and that crazy Mikami addressed him as God_. _And just look at his face_.

_Light is L. He doesn't kill people, he tries to stop i!, _I argue. Then I look at his face. There's shock, anger, horror, and fear written on it. But there's no surprise, no disbelief, nothing that looks innocent. I can see something beneath the calm, collected mask Light-kun wears every day shift. He looks like a trapped animal, ready to savage anyone who gets near him. And then the young detective screams. It's a raw, primal, terrible sound. It is the cry of someone who has lost everything, someone who is stripped naked of every defense he has, right down to the core. And he crumples. For anyone, this would be awful, but to see the composed Light break down like this is horrifying.

Time passes. I don't know how long. Abruptly, noise comes from Light's corner, a short, harsh laugh like a crow's caw.

"Ha." Again. "Ha, ha. Ha ha ha!" He is laughing like a madman, an unearthly sound that sets everyone's hair on end. It echoes eerily off of the warehouse walls, seeming for all the world like a vengeful ghost. Light stands, staggering a little. Softly, bleakly, he says,

"That's right. I am Kira."

My traitorous heart, though it should stop beating at this news, steadily pounds on. Light is a mass murderer, a psychopath who cares nothing for human life. He is the one who killed countless criminals, outwitted the police at every turn, drove his father to his death, and killed his best friend. I have been standing by, and defending, and working with a serial killer every day. Light/Kira's voice gains strength, turning mocking,

"I am Kira, and the god of this new world."

His face has resumed its expressionless mask, but his eyes are bright, haunted, insane. I wonder just how much the use of this deadly notebook has affected him too.

"All of you, you never guessed. Not Matsuda, not my father, not even Ryuzaki at the end. Stupid people, working tirelessly to catch someone you believed to be a mere criminal, who was right under your noses. Leading you, in fact."

Kira is shaking now. "I read those forums early on. They knew me then for what I am. Lord Kira, they called me. No one listened. _No one listened!_" he screams.

"It was so easy. All I had to do was enter the database through Soichiro's computer, and find their names and faces. That FBI agent, Raye Penber, he killed the other American agents. And then his widow came to me, and I learned her name and killed her. She found what she was looking for in the end. I told her before she died, that I was Kira. I guess you wouldn't know. 'Dead men tell no tales' and all that. My work went well for a while, until those foreigners interfered. Everything went downhill from there. L, the FBI, my father's task force, none of them could beat me. Couldn't bear to think that a single Japanese teenager could be the deity they were defying."

Light—Kira-L—whoever or whatever he really is laughs again, dark and low.

"Until you, Near." His head snaps up. "Until you joined forces with Mello, and tried to stop the birth of a new world. Fine. I'll admit that you were clever, that you were quite willing to end human lives to attain the death of one. So how different are you from me, really? You were ready to sacrifice a little girl's life, but I never touched children. You tried to protect _criminals_, but the great L still let a criminal be killed in a gamble to find Kira. You pretend to be better and more moral than everyone else, but the world has changed. And now you can't pretend, and I don't have to. You just aren't ready to accept that someone else is the lord of everything, and you are wrong, and I am right. Or rather, I am right and wrong. I am justice."

Near watches him through narrowed eyes. Then he speaks.

"You are wrong, and only wrong. Justice is not killing everyone who commits a crime. Justice is doing what is right yourself. This world might be rotten, but in every rotting apple there are good spots. Your justice? It is nothing more than the excuse of a crazy murderer for what is wrong with him, and that notebook is no tool of justice, but a killing weapon. You are rotten to the core, Light Yagami, and no shiny, varnished outside can conceal that. Worms like you will not make the world better." He does not glance at anyone else, but focuses instead on Kira. "Arrest Light Yagami, Kira, for the murders of hundreds."

Kira. In such a short time, I have gone from thinking of him as the upstanding, dedicated young detective known as L and as Light Yagami to knowing him as a psychotic, corrupt murderer named Kira. Did I—did anyone—ever know the person Light Yagami? Was there ever a Light Yagami, or was he just Kira the entire time? I cannot let this continue. Justice cannot wait to work. This monster is wrong, and his deeds are wrong. I scream,

"He has to die! _He has to dieI_" Six deafening gunshots sound from my gun, even as my coworkers leap to stop me. Six, the maximum number of bullets that guns in those Western movies contain, the number of bullets that a desperate man would fire, because he could not afford to rely on one or two. They hit him, if not in the places my shaking hand aimed them at. Blood spurts and he howls.

"Matsuda, you fool! This is so people like my father don't have to die in vain! You can't kill justice! You can't kill God!"

Kira moans on the ground. "Misa…Where is Misa? She has to kill them."

"Misa is back at the hotel," Near calmly replies.

"Mikami! You have a notebook, write their names down!"

Mikami shakes and shakes, his skin going bone white and his pupils shrinking to specks. Finally he collapses, blood pouring from beneath his drooping eyelids like tears.

"He's hemorrhaging from somewhere, perhaps in his brain. There's no hope for him," Near states.

Kira thrashes in his blood, a speck landing on my hand. I flick my hand, revolted, and the blood splashes on the floor. His blood is dirty, tainted. I am sure of it.

"Takada! Takada, end this!" Kira screeches, gone mad. _Madder_.

Suddenly Kira moves, quick as a viper, struggling for his watch. He yanks out a piece of paper and frantically begins to write on it with his own blood.

Light-kun's POV

I laugh triumphantly, though the sound is choked by fluid. Elated, I cry out, "You'll all die now, every one of you fools who think to stop a new-"

A thunderclap sounds in the warehouse, and it feels as if lightning has struck me. Not thunder, not lightning—a gunshot and a bullet. I am thrown back into the sticky pool of blood I have created, shockingly bright against the dull, grimy warehouse floor. Matsuda, my shooter, is breathing hard.

Ryuk grins fearsomely.

"It's been fun and all, Light, but it looks like the game is over. You eased my boredom for a while. But I can't return to the Shinigami realm until the human who owns the Death Note dies. I might be pretty long-lived, but there is no way I'm waiting around for you to die. Don't complain. I promised that I would be the one to write your name down when you died. So long, Light Yagami."

I hear the scratch of a writing utensil on paper through the blinding pain. It can't be. I can't die, it isn't possible!

"No!" I howl. "I don't want to die! I You can't kill me, you can't kill a god! I am justice! I am the ruler of this world! I am—"

Time slows to a crawl. I can no longer see the warehouse, hear the cops, feel my life draining away, smell the acid stench of blood. I see something new now. A star has gone supernova in my chest, and everything is abruptly crystal clear.

_A young law student, bored but prepared for his first year of college, unmarred by hate and blood and grief._

_The same student, despairing and scornful if the justice system he tried to uphold, finding a mysterious black notebook that claimed it could kill people._

_A father, dedicated to his family and to his work, hunting a murderer only to die himself with that killer by his side._

_An eerie, wild-maned but brilliant young detective hunched over a bowl of sweets, then dead at his only friend's and prey's hands._

_A mourning woman driven by sorrow to seek her fiance's killer, only to find the murderer as she sought help, and to be slaughtered in turn._

_A bubbly, darkly dressed pop star, tortured but loyal to her love even as she and he were pursued for terrible crimes._

_A trusting, then suspicious team of investigators, with one steadfast man who refused to believe that his greatest ally was in truth his worst enemy._

_Legions of criminals, some bloodied or torn, some outwardly untouched, all dead and slain by that young student._

_A ruthless, chocolate-eating genius and his team against an equally ruthless and secretive rival and his own team, in a deadly game of cat and mouse that claimed one life and fulfilled another._

_A brilliant and beautiful news announcer, faithful until her fiery death, broadcasting the purported savior's word at risk to what should have been a happy life._

_Business executives determined to cut short lives with their shinigami-given notebook to extend their company._

_A justice-obsessed prosecutor who worshipped and aided a killer and paid the ultimate price for it._

_An otherworldly monster who began the bloody story simply out of boredom and callously watched it unfold._

_An insane serial killer who raised himself to the level of God and claimed to be a sort of twisted justice, even as he destroyed his fellow men and coldly devalued human lives._

My movements slow. I release my last word into the blood-touched air "—wrong." As the world fades from view, and a feeling I can only describe not as the absence of something, but utter nothingness begins to embrace me, I see Matsuda's face. It is astonished.


End file.
